New River Gorge


New River Gorge is the largest, best known climbing area in West Virginia and one of the big names of the East. There are hundreds of different sport and trad routes spanning many miles of 40-150 foot walls. For the Traditionalist, there are many easy and difficult trad routes. A fun trad route that I did was Fantasy on Endless Wall. Two others are Easily Flakey at the Bridge Butress {Sara Hage on Easily Flakey Left} and New Yosemite at the Junk Yard Wall. For the sport climber, the gorge is filled with just as many lines. Some of the Steep Overhanging Weenie stuff is located Kaymoor. The classic here is Latic Acid Bath in the Hole. Along Endless, some of the classic routes are Totally Clipse, Aestetica, Muckracker, Fool Effect and Is is Safe?, which we did our last climbing trip. There is good camping here. We stayed at the a really cool/inexpensive campsite 5 minutes from Endless.


If you are coming to the Gorge, I suggest you purchase yourself a guide book. Rick Thompson in my opinion did the best guide for the gorge. His guide cost 30 bucks, but it is very complete and abuse proof. I actually dropped mine in a puddle at endless and it still is holding together.






Pictures

  1. Bridge Buttress
  2. Endless Wall
  3. Beauty Mountain
  4. Scenery